1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a system, method, and program for automatically restoring corrupt or missing data files.
2. Description of the Related Art
Applications running on a host or server system typically retrieve and store data files on a storage device. The storage device may be comprised of a simple disk drive or multiple disks, such as the case with a Direct Access Storage Device (DASD), Just a Bunch of Disks (JBOD), a Redundant Array of Independent Disks (RAID), etc. Periodically, access to a file or a collection of files can simply fail for a number of reasons, such as a media Input/Output (I/O) error due to a corrupted file, or the prior deletion of the file, unintentional or not. The most common cause of I/O errors is the operating system crashing (e.g. resource sharing errors, software incompatibility, etc.) or improper shutdown of the system.
When such errors occur, the application accessing the data file usually fails also. Typically, the user must start a separate application to restore the necessary files and then restart the failed application from the beginning. A significant loss of time and productivity is often incurred during this process. Furthermore, the end-user may not always be familiar with the operation to restore the lost or corrupt file(s), and this process may require the intervention of a support person or group to complete.
For these reasons, there is a need in the art to provide techniques to better manage access failures to avoid system disruption.